Compacting machines or compactors are commonly used to compact work materials (such as soil, gravel, asphalt) to a desired density while constructing buildings, highways, parking lots, and other structures. Often, earthen material at a worksite must be compacted and one or more compacting machines must be involved to successively compact material until the desired level of compaction is achieved. The process may require many passes over the work material to reach the desired level. A modulus of resilience is one measurement used to determine the level of compaction.
There are a variety of methods for determining a modulus of resilience of a soil or other material. Current technology includes the use of nuclear density gauges, plate load testing deflectometers, or the like, that measure soil density or soil stiffness either before and/or after a compaction process. Although this may provide an accurate measurement for the compaction of the soil or other material, these measures must be performed separately from the compaction process. Systems for measuring compaction during the compaction process are known. U.S. Pat. No. 8,057,124 B2, assigned to Wacker Neuson Produktion GmbH & Co., discloses a method and device for measuring soil parameters. It uses an approximation of the actual gradient of the contact force and a contact surface parameter to calculate a dynamic modulus of deformation. However, this modulus is dimensionless.
Current methods fail to provide a modulus of resilience with an engineering unit value that can be determined during the compaction process. A disadvantage for current methods is that a unitless modulus of resilience cannot be used for other purposes, such as by a design engineer who needs to know the specific compaction of the soil or other material in order to build or design roads, building pads, etc. The present disclosure is directed to overcoming or mitigating one or more of these problems set forth.
The foregoing background discussion is intended solely to aid the reader. It is not intended to limit the innovations described herein, nor to limit or expand the prior art discussed. Thus, the foregoing discussion should not be taken to indicate that any particular element of a prior system is unsuitable for use with the innovations described herein, nor is it intended to indicate that any element is essential in implementing the innovations described herein. The implementations and application of the innovations described herein are defined by the appended claims.